I am planning to have LED lights installed on my Williams GP9 and F3 AA engines. I haven’t been able to find any real pictures, so I wanted to know if anyone could answer the following questions:
1)Would it have been prototypical to have green front and red rear markers on NYC and Boston & Maine GP9’s?
2)Did either of these roadnames run the GP9 cab forward with yellow strobe lights?
3)Did the NYC have green front and red rear markers on their F3’s?
4)Would a “warm” white or “cool” white headlight be closer to the actual headlight these roadnames used on the GP9 and F3?
Thanks for any and all who can help answer my questions or at least point me in the right direction.
Let’s get some terminology squared away first. This lights are not ‘marker’ lights. The correct term is ‘classification’ lights. These were used to denote the ‘class’ of a train. Normally, most engines would have the ‘class’ lights off if the was a normally scheduled train.
Green - Following sections of a train. If there were 3 section of a scheduled train, the first two sections would display ‘green’ class lights, and the last section would have the class lights off. This way, an opposing train knows to wait for all of the sections to pass before proceeding onto the main track.
White - Extra train. This would be a non scheduled train.
Red - This is where your ‘class’ light turns into a ‘marker’ light. Many time light engines or helpers will have the rear class lights show red as the are running without a caboose(which would have rear facing red marker lights).
Class lights are no longer required, and new engine orders do not have them. Many older engines have had them removed/plated over.
Only if the engine was running light with following sections and no caboose. Not really seen(but I suppose there is a picture of one somewhere).
The NYC had their GP’s set up for long hood forward as the default. I am not sure how the B&M had theirs set up. As delivered, they would not have had yellow strobe lights. I am not sure if they were ever added(NYC was gone with the PC merger in the late 60’s)
Basically the same answer as question 1.
The ‘warm’ while would be closer to the headlights on these older 50’s era engines.
#1 and 3: absolutely not. See jim’s previous post about what those lights were actually used for. In addition to the class lights, jim forgot to mention that green or white flags are also displayed during the day. A regularly scheduled train that does not have following sections would not display signals.
#2: I’m not really familiar with NYC or BM practices as to which end was the front of their GP9s as delivered.
#4: since the bulbs would be incandescants, I would guess warm white.